On this date in 1863, at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the men who had died there in a terrible battle the previous July, President Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans what was at stake. Packed in the midst of a sea of men in frock coats, he spoke for just two minutes.

Lincoln reminded the audience that America was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The raging civil war was a test to see whether America, or indeed whether any nation based on that revolutionary principle, could survive.

Lincoln honored “the brave men, living and dead,” who had fought at Gettysburg, but noted that their struggle there had already consecrated the ground “far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Instead, he told the audience, the dedication ceremony was for the living. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,” he said, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”